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“Sustainable agriculture” is both a philosophy and a goal which seeks to integrate economic environmental and social objectives.
Virginia’s fourth annual conference on sustainable agriculture will be held March 15 and 16 at the Omni Hotel in Charlottesville. It is sponsored by the Virginia Cooperative Extension Service.
In many respects, sustainable agriculture represents a new systhesis, an integration of selected practices from modern conventional (arming, some traditional farming practices that preceded the postWWII era of agricultural chemicals, and new state-of-the-art technologies.
Traditional farming practices such as using legume cover crops to improve soils and to provide biologically-fixed nitrogen, crop rotation, manure and compost utilization, and cultural and biological control of pests are combined with modem crop and livestock genetic material, conservation tillage, controlled grazing and improved pasture utilization, integrated pest management (IPM), and other technologies.
Farming becomes increasingly sustainable as these component practies are integrated into functioning systems which maximize benficial ecological processes. Fertilizers, pesticides, and other agricultural chemicals are not excluded in this approach; however, there is a deliberate effort to maximize onfarm, renewable resources to minimize the need for off-farm, non-renewable purchased inputs, particularly agricultural chemicals.
Both profitably and unproved environmental quality result from using resources and additives more efficiently.
The purpose of this conference is
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